Songoftheday 1/26/21 - When I'm done with thinking then I'm done with you, and when I'm done with crying then I'm done with you...

 

 

"I Do" - Lisa Loeb

from the album Firecracker (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #17 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 18

 

Today's song of the day comes from singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb, who scored a #1 hit on her first try out (and before she was even signed to a label) in "Stay (I Missed You)" and had a top-20 follow-up with "Do You Sleep?" in the autumn of 1995.  After two of the three members of her band, Nine Stories, dropped out, Loeb decided to bill herself only on her next album Firecracker in 1997. The lead single from the record, "I Do", was deceptively titled, as it referred to her label's demand for a "single" for the album, with lyrics that painted a picture of a troubled relationship, as opposed to a potentially wedded one. With joyful jangle-pop guitars and Lisa's chirpy voice, her fans (and I) were fooled as well, but it's a pretty well-crafted song for a hastily-finished one...

"I Do" became Loeb's third (and so far last) top-40 pop hit, reaching the top 20 in February of 1998. The song spent a week at #3 on Billboard magazine's older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, and went to #22 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list. Internationally, the single topped the pop chart in Canada for one week, and was a minor hit in Germany at #81 and the UK at #83. The Firecracker album peaked at #88 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in America, going on to move over a half million copies. At the 1998 Grammy Award, the album was nominated for Best Non-Classical Engineered Album, which went to Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions. 

The second single from Firecracker was "Let's Forget About It", which more directly deals with romance gone sour, with the same intensity but more fire. It went to #38 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 chart, and stopped at #71 on the pop Hot 100, her most recent appearance there. That track also got into the Canadian Top-40 at #21.  Loeb returned in 2002, moving from Geffen to A&M Records (where her initial hit "Stay" appeared on the Reality Bites soundtrack) for her third effort Cake and Pie. The first single from the set, "Underdog", spent a week on the Adult Top-40 chart at #39, while the album also popped in for a week at the rank second from the bottom (#199) on the Billboard 200. 

Since then Lisa's gone indie, releasing five more regular studio albums as well as six children's music recordings. In the mid-2000's she became a mini-fixture on cable TV, appearing on a cooking show with then-boyfriend Dweezil Zappa and later in a "dating" documentary. In 2006, Loeb got back on the radio as a featured singer on Japanese band Rin's song "Anti-Hero", which made it to #36 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. Her most recent release, A Simple Trick To Happiness, came out in 2020. 

(8/10)

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Here's Lisa performing "I Do" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote the album...

Next up, live in concert...

and lastly, an acoustic take for MTV (with Dweezil introducing her)...

Up tomorrow: A pop diva comes out of her chrysalis.